Why does Christmas start so early these days?
Do you love Christmas? Are you one of those people who get their presents bought in October, the cards written in November and the 10 foot tree up and decorated by the first week of December?
Or are you like me and many others I know who just wish the whole thing would start when it used to: that is around the 18th of December at the earliest. Now it just comes earlier and earlier every year, I even had a Christmas card arrive by post this year in November a full month before the big day itself.
And it gets me down; every year I seem to slip into a seasonal misery, all because normal service just gets disrupted as Christmas kicks in.
Newspapers become full of “gift ideas” or “how to make the perfect 5 bird roast” recipes, TV adverts are jingle after bloody jingle and my favourite TV channel, The Food Channel, has incessant regurgitated ideas for the “perfect day”.
And then there are the “if you can’t enjoy yourself at Christmas time when can you?” parties. That’s the mantra of so many boozed up office gangs making a nuisance of themselves in so many pubs and restaurants. Not to mention the rugby and football club terraces that will now be littered with supporters dressed as Santa, not one having travelled by sleigh.
Why can’t we wait just a little bit longer, like we used to? This early start destroys the real sense of something special, instead creating a sense of something that needs to be endured with only cold turkey sandwiches being the reward for surviving another merry blooming Christmas.
